Not that I particularly object to the Democrats holding off on publishing what was essentially a political hack job against the last President, but…

Secretary of State John Kerry personally phoned Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Friday morning to ask her to delay the imminent release of her committee’s report on CIA torture and rendition during the George W. Bush administration, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Kerry was not going rogue — his call came after an interagency process that decided the release of the report early next week, asFeinstein had been planning, could complicate relationships with foreign countries at a sensitive time and posed an unacceptable risk to U.S. personnel and facilities abroad. Kerry told Feinstein he still supports releasing the report, just not right now.

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to Jewish State.

“Previously.” One of two things just happened: either Barack Obama has nominated somebody for Secretary of State who is now putting words in Barack Obama’s mouth*; or the Obama administration has decided to start the process where they can distance themselves from an ally that is cordially hated by large swathes of supporters of the Obama administration. You tell me which is worse, because I’m still scratching my head over trying to decide that one. (more…)

Bob Schieffer: The President spoke to Vladimir Putin we are told for 90 minutes yesterday. The White House is describing it as the toughest phone call of his presidency. DO you think it had any impact?

Check with your former colleagues, Secretary Kerry: there was no point to signing this treaty, because it will not be ratified.

Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to sign an arms trade treaty opposed by the Senate and the gun lobby as early as Wednesday, and Republicans aren’t happy about it.

[snip]

“This treaty is already dead in the water in the Senate, and they know it,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services. “The Administration is wasting precious time trying to sign away our laws to the global community and unelected U.N. bureaucrats.”

A majority of Senators oppose the treaty because it covers small arms, making ratification impossible in the short term.

…this (via Hot Air) sounds pretty [expletive deleted] much like the US government was pretty [expletive deleted] explicitly offered a mercenary contract by the [expletive deleted] oil oligarchies.

KERRY: Well, we don’t know what action we are engaged in right now, but they have been quite significant. I mean, very significant. In fact, some of them have said that if the U.S. is prepared to go do the whole thing, the way we’ve done it previously in other places, they’ll carry that cost. That’s how dedicated they are to this. Obviously, that is not in the cards and nobody is talking about it, but they are talking about taking seriously getting this job done.

Two days after he made the Obama administration’s definitive case for attacking Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry will make the case for asking for congressional permission on the Sunday talk shows, a State Department aide said Saturday.

The White House has dispatched Kerry to all five Sunday morning news programs to urge a yes vote in Congress on the use-of-force authorization President Barack Obama seeks against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Note that Kerry skipped the Spanish-language stations this go-round; this is all about shoring up support for Barack Obama’s policies among the President’s white, liberal base. The private polling numbers that the President’s undoubtedly gotten by now for this issue must be horrible. (more…)

It may well be that the United States will go to war with Iraq. But if so, it should be because we have to — not because we want to. For the American people to accept the legitimacy of this conflict and give their consent to it, the Bush administration must first present detailed evidence of the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and then prove that all other avenues of protecting our nation’s security interests have been exhausted.

A senior Palestinian official told [the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper] that US Secretary of State John Kerry gave the Palestinians assurances that Israel would decrease construction in settlement blocs. The official also claimed that Kerry promised that Israel would halt construction in settlements outside the blocs during the peace negotiations.

OK, let me clear something up for foreign observers: under this administration the State Department is a political office designated for inconvenient top Democratic officials who need to be put somewhere safe for a while until they can be retired with some dignity. Nobody really expects John Kerry to be functional in the job; this is a consolation and retirement prize for him. People in the Middle East who want to engage in actual diplomacy with the US government should continue to interact as usual with Near Eastern Affairs Acting Assistant Secretary Beth Jones. – but the smart ones knew that already.